A Feather Fetish

We turn the binoculars on birding’s elder statesman, Gus Yaki, and his flock of fledgling nature lovers.Todd Korol
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Gus Yaki, 81, leads a flock of newbie birders. He shares his passion for birds most days as a volunteer with the Friends of Fish Creek Provincial Park Society.Todd Korol
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Identifying the many species of birds that call Fish Creek Park home.Todd Korol
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A Red-winged Blackbird.Todd Korol
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An Eared Grebe.Todd Korol
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A Yellow-headed Blackbird.Todd Korol
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Harry and Sreedevi Colquhoun stalk a rare white-faced ibis at frank lake. Located near high river, the lake is a popular destination for calgary birdwatchers. “At first it was just to get outside,” harry says of being bitten by the birding bug. “But now it’s like an addiction.”Todd Korol
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American Avocets.Todd Korol
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With much hissing and beating of wings, two canada geese fight for nesting grounds on a pond near Calgary.Todd Korol
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A young Great-Horned Owl keeps a watchful eye on the bird watchers from its perch in a spruce tree in Calgary.Todd Korol
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The distinctive tap, tap, tap stops the group dead in its tracks. Binoculars, long lenses and naked eyes immediately swivel upward, bird books at the ready. “There!” exclaims a watcher. “It looks like a red-breasted sapsucker.” “Oh, I see it,” says another. “Where?” “There, right above the branch. Oh, it just popped back into its hole.” “It’s beautiful.”

“Yes, it’s a red-breasted sapsucker,” proclaims Gus Yaki, the grey-haired leader of the pack. “Notice the red head.” The group moves on, leaving Sphyrapicus ruber, a medium-sized woodpecker found in North American forests, to continue drilling holes in an old tree along the Bow River in Fish Creek Provincial Park.

Yaki, an 81-year-old naturalist, is leading the flock of 15 newbie birders on one of his daily bird-watching courses run by the Friends of Fish Creek Provincial Park Society. The 12-week course introduces incipient nature-lovers to some of the best bird-watching sites in the city, and teaches them how to identify the 257 species (Yaki’s count) of feathered creatures in our midst.

“He’s a walking encyclopedia,” says Carole Hachey of Yaki’s inexhaustible knowledge of birds, plants, butterflies and insects. Six years ago, Hachey started taking Yaki’s birding course to get outside, enjoy the fresh air and meet people. “I have been hooked ever since. He makes it so much fun.”

The group passes a tree pocked with woodpecker holes. “That is a very religious tree,” quips Yaki. “See how holey it is.” As the limber octogenarian heads down the trail, dispensing more one-liners, he swoops down to pick up a piece of litter and tucks it into a small bag to be disposed of later. Without mention, fanfare or preaching, it’s how he lives his life, in harmony with the natural world.

Born and raised in Sandwith, Sask., Yaki became interested in birding in Grade 2. “Our teacher lent me a bird guide and we would check out all the birds we saw walking the three miles to and from school,” he says. “Uphill, both ways,” he adds with a wink.

That bird guide introduced Yaki to a lifelong passion and a career spent leading nature tours around the world. At the top of his life list: seeing 618 species of birds in East Africa, spotting the “beautiful scarlet red” Andean cock-of-the-rock in South America and coming to love the European starling. Why the latter? Most people see it as a blackbird, he explains, “but when you get close, you can see that it has all the colours of the rainbow.”

But Yaki, who moved here in 1993, especially loves bird watching in Calgary, given its boreal, prairie, foothills, alpine and aspen parkland regions. “Those give us a lot of opportunity to see a lot of different species of birds.”

Later, in his home, surrounded by bird books, photos of birds and lush indoor plants, Yaki mused about the ever-growing popularity of birding. In 1994, Friends of Fish Creek started out with one session a week; now they offer 13 courses a week in spring, fall and winter, prime times for observing birds. “I think that people who live in the city want a connection back to nature,” he says.

Based on his long history of observing birds, Yaki is a little alarmed by what he is seeing lately. “I have seen bird populations declining drastically. Birds are showing up here when they should be flying 180 degrees in the opposite direction. One of the most logical reasons would be man-made chemicals,” he explains. “Miners used to take canaries down to the bottom of a coal mine with them, and when they stopped singing, they knew there was danger and it was time to get out of the mine. The declining number of birds is telling us the same thing: there is something wrong with the environment.” Yaki pauses, walks over to his window and peers into his backyard. “Oh, look, a white-crowned sparrow. He has been coming here every day,” he says with a smile, momentarily relieved.

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